smackman

I own a 2011 IS 250 Convertible. It has the 18 inch wheels. I live in North Louisiana. We have maybe 3 months of winter but seldom any ice or snow. Very seldom. It will get below freezing but not often....

I need a tire that is good in the rain and one that has some descent tread life.
Now I do not want 10 ply clunkers where it feels like I am riding in a log truck.

Is it okay to look at Ultra summer tires or should I stick with All season tires. This car will never intentionally be driven in Ice or snow. We have had ice/snow on the roads maybe 2X in the last 5 years.

I have the Bridgestone Turanza EL400-02. They are rated BAD on tire rack which concerns me as my wife drives this car 350 miles a week to work. So far the tire seems to be holding up fine with 6500 miles on them. I run 38 psi in the front and 40 psi in the back.

Good in rain, Quite ride, descent tread wear are what we are looking for.

Thxs for suggestions

Kurtz

iTrader: (1)

The reason they call them all seasons is that they suck... in all seasons.

In all conditions wet or dry above 35 degrees a summer performance tire will significantly outperform an all season tire.

The Hankook V12 is an excellent bang for the buck tire... it won't run 50k miles like a touring tire, but it'll handle and more importantly stop a ton better for the 20-30k it does last, and it's pretty inexpensive (500-600 bucks for a set of 4)

The Turanzas are terrible in comparison.

Here's a good read that includes 9 inexpensive summer performance tires, the Hankooks among them, all compared to the legendary Michelin PS2-

http://www.caranddriver.com/comparis...mparison-tests

Toymota

I was waiting for Kurtz to say that. But I think he generalizes too much. Sure, most all-seasons suck including the Bridgestone Turanza EL400-02 and the many others which are often fitted as original equipment to passenger cars. But this is more because they are standard touring class tires; not high performance tires. Fortunately, most of them are not even available in sizes for the IS. What is available are some very good ultra high performance all-seasons such as:
- Bridgestone Potenza RE970AS Pole Position
- Continental ExtremeContact DWS
- Michelin Pilot Sport A/S Plus
- Pirelli PZero Nero All Season

Now I haven't found a direct head to head comparison of any of these all-seasons versus summer tires, so I'll try and compare objective tests from Tire Rack using the same car and facilities. Here is the data for the Continental ExtremeContact DWS versus the Hankook Ventus V12 evo K110, a reasonably priced max performance summer tire, versus the Michelin Pilot Super Sport, pretty much the best (but expensive) summer tire you can get.

Conti DWS vs Hankook V12 vs Michelin PSS
Slalom (sec) dry: 5.25, 5.26, 5.04
Slalom (sec) wet: 5.24, 5.61, 5.10
Lap dry: 31.89, 31.57, 30.54
Lap wet: 32.44, 34.12, 31.37
50mph stop (ft) dry: 88.2, 84.8, 80.3
50mph stop (ft) wet: 89.9, 97.7, 96.3
cornering g dry: 0.97, 0.90, 1.07
cornering g wet: 0.91, 0.77, 0.97

So we can see the Hankooks are pretty decent in the dry, better stopping distance than the Contis, but not as much insane performance as the Michelins.

In the wet however, the Conti all-seasons are really starting to shine. Most of its wet numbers are close to its dry numbers, performing better than the Hankook summer tires which have really deteriorated in the wet, and even stopping shorter than the Michelins.

So I don't think it's right to generalize with "all all-seasons suck in all seasons" and that summer tires are always better. There are some really bad summer tires too like the Bridgestone Turanza ER33 which is a grand touring tire fitted as OE to the IS. Then there are some really good all-seasons like the Conti DWS which seemingly cuts through water like it's not there. You need to look at each specific tire and see how it performs over all the different criteria and decide which one suits your needs best.

I think you should consider the Conti DWS. It's reasonably priced, has pretty good performance in the dry and incredible performance in the wet, a 50,000 mile treadlife warranty and UTQG 540. It will also be able to handle snow and ice should you get any.